Sunset on the black sand beach at Lago Villarica

The town of Pucon on the edge of the lake

The ever present danger of an eruption

At the base of the chair lift up the volcano

Trekking to the glacier

Everyone putting on their ice climbing gear to climb the glacier

The glacier and the lake

Trekking up the glacier

The lake far below

The summit in view

Gas fumes escaping from the crater

Looking down into the crater

Hikers on the edge above the crater through some smoke

Amazing scenery from the top

Volcan Villarica smoking

Pucon, Chile

Climbing Volcan Villarica

March 28, 2008

Freedom was all that she owned

She moved faster all on her own

But the freedom had left her

Left her drifting like smoke

- Lucero

Pucon is a pretty lakeside town on Lago Villarica on the northern end of the Lake District in Chile. It´s a convenient stopover point when heading south towards the other lakes in the region or to Bariloche on the Argentine side of the Lake District. Pucon is actually a rather fancy resort town, with the lakes in the summer and skiing in the winter, there are high-end hotels, expensive restaurants, a casino, and even a Lacoste store. For me, the main reason for stopping here, since I would not be partaking in that luxury, was to climb Volcan Villarica, an active volcano with a height of about 2,800 meters. For the climb you have to go with a guide and part of the climb traverses the glacier on the middle section of the volcano so you need crampons and an ice axe to make it to the top, even in the summer. The price for the tours was pretty steep and varied from 33,000 - 48,000 pesos.

Naturally, I opted for the cheapest one I could find and in the end it didn´t seem to make much of a difference. I showed up at 7am the next day hoping to make the climb, prepared with sandwiches and water and some warm clothes. The weather, unfortunately, had not cooperated by bringing lots of clouds and rain so the guides told us that the trip could not be made that day and we would need to come back tomorrow when the weather would supposedly be better. So again the next morning the group arrived at 7am and this time we were greeted with perfect weather for the climb so we all piled into the van and headed for the volcano.

The first part of the climb consisted of paying 5,000 pesos extra to take a chair lift up about 400 meters, saving you an hour or so of walking. This was followed by some semi-steep climbing on some rocky slopes up to the base of the glacier. Here you put on your ice climbing equipment and begin trekking up the glacier towards the summit. If you´ve never used crampons before then let me tell you that they are incredible. It is like the difference between driving an old rear wheel drive car on slick roads versus an all wheel drive vehicle, you simply never slip, even an inch. Of course that only applies if you use the equipment properly and one guy managed to lose his balance and slid down the face of the glacier about 50 yards before slamming into a pile of rocks. Luckily he was okay and continued on, but as this happened in front of everyone putting on their crampons it served as a serious warning about the dangers involved.

For me, climbing up the glacier was the easiest part of the whole trek and fortunately everyone made it past the glacier without any problems. The last stage was like a steep staircase climbing up the loose sharp jagged volcanic rock all the way to the summit. I think this was probably the toughest part but the climbing pace set by our guide was slow enough that I never got tired. It was actually slow enough to make it harder as many times I could only take one step and then was forced to stop, losing all momentum and rhythm. Standing at the top of the crater was amazing and you could look deep inside in the volcano cone. We were hoping to see lava but our guides told us that right now the lava level had receded deep into the crater so we wouldn´t be able to see any lava.

The weather was perfect, without a cloud in the sky and very little wind and volcanic activity. In a few instances the winds shifted and we were all greeted by noxious sulfur fumes that burned the nose, eyes, and lungs with every second of exposure. Due to this we quickly retreated back to the other side of the crater to look at the glacier fields before heading back down the volcano. The journey down was actually a lot of fun as we got to slide down trails in the glacier, making things much faster. The final slide was in a deep trough in the glacier and wound its way down the side of the volcano like a spiral staircase. The rest of the way down was simple as we moved quickly through the loose rock and sand, returning back to the van at around 4pm. After a nice dinner in town it was time to pack up again and get some sleep before the bus trip to Bariloche the next morning.